Waterways and Canal-Building in Medieval England
John Blair
Abstract
A book centring on late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman canals may come as a surprise; it is generally assumed that no such things existed. Persuasive evidence has, however, been unearthed independently by several scholars, and has stimulated this first serious study of improved waterways in England between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. England is naturally well-endowed with a network of navigable rivers, especially the easterly systems draining into the Thames, Wash, and Humber. The central middle ages saw innovative and extensive development of this network, including the digging of ca ... More
A book centring on late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman canals may come as a surprise; it is generally assumed that no such things existed. Persuasive evidence has, however, been unearthed independently by several scholars, and has stimulated this first serious study of improved waterways in England between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. England is naturally well-endowed with a network of navigable rivers, especially the easterly systems draining into the Thames, Wash, and Humber. The central middle ages saw innovative and extensive development of this network, including the digging of canals bypassing difficult stretches of rivers, or linking rivers to important production centres. The eleventh and twelfth centuries seem to have been the high point for this dynamic approach to water-transport: after 1200, the improvement of roads and bridges increasingly diverted resources away from the canals, many of which stagnated with the reassertion of natural drainage patterns. This new perspective has an important bearing on the economy, landscape, settlement patterns, and inter-regional contacts of medieval England.
Keywords:
late Anglo-Saxon canals,
Anglo-Norman canals,
Thames,
Wash,
Humber,
water-transport,
landscape,
settlement patterns,
inter-regional contacts,
medieval England
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198723134 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780198723134.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
John Blair, editor
Lecturer in Modern History, Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology, Queen's College, Oxford
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